Direct and external credit card payment providers

Shopify supports two types of third-party payment providers: direct payment providers and external payment providers.

To find out if a third-party payment provider is available in your region, see Shopify payment gateways.

Direct payment providers

A direct payment provider is a form of payment that is included on the Shopify checkout. Your customer completes their payment on the Shopify checkout, and is not redirected at any time during the checkout process.

External payment providers

An external payment provider integrates with Shopify. When your customer completes their order, they are redirected to complete their payment with the external payment provider. When payment is complete, your customer is redirected back to your store to view their order summary and confirmation page.

For example, if you use an external payment provider, your customer sees the checkout of that payment provider when they are paying for their order.